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I’ve read tons of these and still have no idea if I have aphantasia or not. I can’t understand whether people just have different ways of describing what’s in t

by andy99 1y ago

I’ve read tons of these and still have no idea if I have aphantasia or not. I can’t understand whether people just have different ways of describing what’s in their minds eye or if there’s really a fundamental difference.

thecaio 1y ago
I was thinking the same! At first, I thought I was firmly in the “can clearly visualize” camp, but the more I read and hear people describe how they form (or don't) mental images, the less sure I am.
bigyikes 1y ago
I’ve interrogated people about this but can never get a straight answer. —— “So you can really see things in your head when your eyes are closed?” Yeah! “And it’s as though you’re seeing the object in front of you?” Yeah, you don’t have that? “So it’s like you’re really seeing it? It’s the sensation of sight?“ Well… it’s kind of different. I’m not really seeing it. —— …and around we go. Personally, I can see images when I dream, but I don’t see anything at all if I’m conscious and closing my eyes. I can recite the qualities of an object, and this generates impressions of the object in my head, but it’s not really seeing. It’s vibe seeing.
- mnmalst 1y ago
  I am the same and I am not convinced people can really - see - things. Like, when I close my eyes, I see the inside of my eye lids, the blackness. When I then try to imagine a candle for example there is no candle appearing in the darkness, I just remember how a candle is shaped its parts and similar characteristics. I see nothing.
  - the_af 1y ago
    > I just remember how a candle is shaped its parts and similar characteristics If you do not somehow "see" the shape of the candle, how do you remember its physical characteristics? Is it like a list of physical properties in abstract form? An irregular cylinder of diameter X, longer than it's diameter, etc? I can see, in front of me, a lit candle if I wish it. I cannot claim it's picture-perfect, but I can see it; and most people can, too. I can see its yellow flame flickering. I can see drops of wax along the candle. I can see the yellow light it casts.
    - bigyikes 1y ago
      Not the parent, but I relate to their experience. It depends on what you mean by “see”. It’s nothing like seeing with my eyes, and it’s nothing like dreaming. When I “see” it is abstract. There are impressions and sensations. I can recall the qualities of something - even the visual qualities - but it doesn’t feel like sight. Can you remember what something smells like? I can recall a foul smell, but I don’t recoil because it doesn’t actually feel like smelling. Still, I have an impression of the smell. Sight works the same for me.
      - mnmalst 1y ago
        yes I think you come close to describing how I imagine things. Seeing is just fundamentally the wrong word, at least in my case. When I for example imagine a road I rode on with my bike the other day and do this with my eyes open, there is nothing popping up in front of my eyes, mixed with what i actually see atm, it's more like abstractions popping up in the back of my head. Very simple drawings maybe, just the contours of how it really looks.
        altruios 1y ago
        Perhaps it is a mental process you can train and get better at. I understand the 'back of the head', location for imagination. And now - for me - it's at the front with some specific training. Drawing (and specific techniques within) have been the cause of the biggest shifts to 'where/how' my imagination is.
      - Narushia 1y ago
        > it’s nothing like dreaming. That's interesting. When I close my eyes and imagine "seeing" things, I would actually describe it as pretty much exactly like the sensation I have when I "see" stuff in dreams. To me, this similarity is especially clear when I wake up in the middle of a dream, then close my eyes while awake — I can continue where I left off, and it "looks" exactly the same as in the dream. But I agree that it doesn't feel like "sight", as in the physical act of seeing with your eyes.
  - karmakaze 1y ago
    I'm also the same, but I do believe others can vividly see creations in their mind's eye. Nikola Tesla was one who could tinker in his imagination. Of course I wish I could do the same. On the other hand, like a blind person with other heightened senses, I have strengths in thought that surpass what seeing concretely may obscure. Most of my thoughts and reasoning is more like following graphs of related bits of vaguely visual information, it's far more topologically structural than bound to 3D physicality.
    - drooby 1y ago
      I'm convinced I probably have aphantasia.. maybe even quite extreme. On a scale of 1-10 probably 1 or 2 vividness. But if I take shrooms.... I can actually see objects with my eyes closed. I can rotate them. Morph them. It's so fun! Huge bummer that I miss out on stuff like this in my daily life. What's weird is that I can still "rotate objects" and correctly predict their final state when I am sober (up to a point, of course). But I am blind to the actual visual. It's hard to explain. It's just not registering in my consciousness - but perhaps it's there behind the curtain. So, the mind is undoubtedly capable of performing this feat. However, my brain in sober state is not wired to transfer information in this way.
      - karmakaze 1y ago
        Exactly same here. Can operation on the data, without the visuals.
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    Back when I was on some medication to help me sleep, it came with the side effect of having vivid dreams... and if I didn't fall asleep fast enough after taking it, I'd get hallucinations while my eyes were closed. I knew I wasn't seeing what I thought I was seeing, but I wasn't really in control of the imagery. In one case, I thought there was a suit of armor standing over me and mumbling. In another, I was laying in bed, but I was seeing the living room from a few feet outside of my bedroom. My - and what I presume is "normal" - mental imagery isn't any different than those hallucinations, with the exception of I am willing what I imagine, and therefore control what I "see" in my mind. The colors, contours, lighting, shading, and so on are all like what you would see with your eyes, though the actual level of detail is less.
  - RaftPeople 1y ago
    > I am the same and I am not convinced people can really - see - things My experience of seeing images in my mind is significantly different than when I am not seeing images, and also different from just remembering the details of an object like an apple vs visualizing it. Regarding closing your eyes: I don't typically close my eyes when I create mental imagery, I'm turning it off and on right now as I type this, now there's an apple I can see in my mind, now there is nothing but the generic slightly darkish background that the apple was sitting in front of. Now the apple is there again but it's green not red, etc.
- ehutch79 1y ago
  Pretend you're talking about photos and cameras. You mean you can see the image? even though the camera isn't pointed at it now? Like it's really seeing it? Same idea. You're seeing it, but you know it's just a memory of the thing, not a live view. Like pulling up a video or jpg instead of a live feed.
  - bigyikes 1y ago
    Let’s suppose you have perfect recall. Pull up the image on your phone and look at it. Now close your eyes and imagine the image as accurately as you can. Is it as though you didn’t close your eyes at all? Do you see it the same way as when your eyes are open?
    - k__ 1y ago
      No. When I'm fully awake, the mental images are more like someone attached a new camera with a field of view that ends at the edges of the object/scene I try to generate.
      - bigyikes 1y ago
        Okay, forget everything outside that field of view in your real vision. If you could crop your real field of view somehow to just the photo in question, then would it be as though nothing changed? (Like, I get that things outside the phone image would change, but does the image your imagining change? Does the sensation change?)
        k__ 1y ago
        The details get better or near photorealistic when I'm about to doze off. When I wide awake, parts of the image are "gone" when I'm not focusing them. Also, the sensation of seeing in my mind does feel different. It's like there is some different place where that image is showing up. Even if I imagine the mental image to overlay with my real vision, it feels like it's "added" somewhere between my conscious mind and the outside/real world.
  - 1y ago
- kraftman 1y ago
  It's like hearing a song in your head, you can listen to it and maybe keep time roughly but if someone asks you what instruments there are you might not be able to get all of them, or might not remember the drums or the baseline. It's all much more vague. If you asked me to remember my childhood home I can visualise 'all of it' in my head, but maybe not what the type of bricks are like, or where all of the windows were.
  - tarentel 1y ago
    Not quite. I have had a lot of musical training and have a very good musical memory. I can write down songs from my head or hear a song and write it down later, depending on how complicated it is, usually with only 1-2 listens, or play it back, etc. I can visualize things in my head but it is a lot more abstract, or rather, harder to explain.
    - tavavex 1y ago
      I think the person you're replying to didn't describe it exactly. It's not really about how good your memory is, I think. It's that no matter what, "replaying" the song in your head isn't going to bring about the same reaction as actually physically hearing music. It's like a simulation, a higher-order perception, thinking of yourself hearing it rather than willing yourself to really hear it in the same way as usual.
  - Trasmatta 1y ago
    This actually highlights to me what may be different about mental images for other people. Because I can much more clearly hear music in my head than I can see images in my head. So if it's much more vague for others, that must be kind of what images are like for me.
    - RaftPeople 1y ago
      For me images are clear and easy, sound is limited and more difficult.
- nosianu 1y ago
  For me it is like a different "space" for mental vs real images. It is not the same neurons, I would guess. The real images are (and feel) outside of myself (obviously, you may say). The mental image feels very close and kind of "inside my mental space", in a dark space. It is far from how I see with my eyes on all levels, very basic. It is more conceptual, that concept given some vague form, not "pixels" (not that the eye is like a camera sensor either, it is much more complicated, a lot of pre-processing taking place right in the retina, which developed from a piece of brain in very early embryonic development). The better I know the object the better this internal concept-image, but far from what looking at the real thing is like. I am able to visualize, that's why I could write this, but I think my ability to do so is near the bottom. It is vague without details unless I concentrate on them specifically, and it is very dark in there. On https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia I am between apple #3 and #4 in that picture. When I read novels I develop barely any internal imagery, only barebones conceptual ones. Sometimes I look at fancy visually stunning movies, Youtube videos, or graphics sites on the web specifically to "download" some better images into my brain. Mostly for fantastical landscapes and architecture. The Lord of the Rings movies, for example, completely replaced all internal mental images I may have had, even though I read the books long before those movies were made. People like me need graphically talented people around, or my mental images will be very much limited to drastically reduced versions of what I see in real life. (THANK YOU to all graphical artists).
  - conradev 1y ago
    It's the same for me, in terms of it being dark and fuzzy unless concentrated on. but I really do notice this sort of ability when it comes to memory. When I am looking for something, I can often visualize a scene of where I saw it last. This is not always helpful for actually finding the object, but it can be! When trying to recall a meeting, I can recall materials I saw (bits of text on slides, images, etc). I'm fairly good at remembering faces, and if they're next to a name when I see them, I can even associate the name! The flip side, of course, is that if I don't see the name, I won't remember it.
    - markhahn 1y ago
- darkmighty 1y ago
  I'd describe it as like having a second monitor in your desktop. It's not inherently "over" what I already see or anywhere physical, it's like in a different space. Sometimes it can feel like it's "behind" what I am seeing indeed (i.e. kind of over), but it can vary and I suspect that's just a learned position (I just tried and I can shift the position images 'feel where they are'). I don't see with full fidelity, I suspect that's to save power or limitations of my neural circuitry. But I can definitely see red and see shapes. Yes, it's not exactly like seeing with your eyes and if you pay attention you can sense there's trickery involved (particularly with motion being very low fidelity, kind of low FPS), but it's still definitely an image. It's not that it's a blurred image exactly, more that it only generates some details I am particularly focused at. It can't generate a huge quantity of details for an entire scene in 4K, it's more like it generates a scene in 320p and some minor patches can appear at high res, and often the borders are fuzzy. I can imagine this with my eyes open or closed, but it's easier with eyes closed. It feels (and probably is?) that it's the same system used for my dreams, but in my dreams it's more like "setup" to simulate my own vision, and the fidelity is increased somewhat.
  - kayodelycaon 1y ago
    I have three different ways that vision seems to work with me. 1. Actually seeing something like in a dream. 2. A mental scratch pad I can draw on and use spatial awareness to navigate. (I see the code of applications as flying over a landscape or walking through a forest.) 3. Imagination, which uses whatever data vision gets turned into. I'm not sure how common 2 is. A lot of my brain has broken parts and this scratchpad is used in place of logic. This works fine until I need to work on linear list of similar tokens and keep them in order, like math and some functional programming languages.
- noir_lord 1y ago
  > Personally, I can see images when I dream. If I dream I don't ever remember them - I assume I must, I think everyone (barring medical issues) has REM sleep. I envy people that, dreams sound amazing.
  - kaffekaka 1y ago
    In my experience remembering dreams is a matter of practice and stress levels. When life is calmer I remember alot more.
    - noir_lord 1y ago
      Not for me, never remembered them at any point, I asked my mum once if she remembered me dreaming when I was a kid and she couldn't remember it either, no dreams/no nightmares. I have an active imagination and I read a lot of fiction and I don't think I have aphantasia, I just go to sleep, wake up and never remember a thing in between.
  - Semaphor 1y ago
    I went from frequent lucid dreams as a child and teen, to no (remembered) dreams, back to vivid (but very rarely lucid) dreams. Ask while having aphantasia, I wish I could get even approximately close to dream images while awake.
  - kulahan 1y ago
    Have you tried a dream journal? We forget most of our dreams because we might have them at 2 am and wake up at 7 am. If you wake yourself up in the middle of the night one or two times, you're more likely to have been in the middle of a dream, and it's still up there in your brain enough to write down. The more you do this, the easier it becomes.
    - pm215 1y ago
      Personally I strongly do not want to get better at remembering dreams. At the moment I very rarely remember anything about dreaming, and on the very rare occasion that some fragment of memory from a dream pops into my head it is super confusing until I identify "oh, that must have been from a dream". I prefer to keep my memory uncontaminated with random garbage :)
- kulahan 1y ago
  It might be easier to describe as an eye that is only opened manually, and can only focus on highly specific things. This is my superpower - I can see things vividly in my mind, spin them around, zoom in/out, and more. When I'm looking at it, the only thing I can see is whatever object is being imagined. However, yes - it's similar to the sensation of seeing with your own actual eyes. The reason it seems so foreign is because our real eyes can see more than one thing at a time. Our mind's eye can only see exactly one subject at a time (though I should mention that when I navigate cities, I do so by imagining a birds-eye view, so there are many objects IN the map, but I cannot see anything other than the map, and it becomes extremely blurry outside of the section I'm focusing on).
- tbabb 1y ago
  Here is some context: Early in the aphantasia discourse, someone asked a group I was in to do a mental exercise: Imagine an apple. Can you tell what color it is? What variety? Can you tell the lighting? Is it against a background? Does it have a texture? Imagine cutting into it. And so on. For me, not only was the color, variety, lighting, and texture crystal clear, but I noticed that when I mentally "cut into" the apple, I could see where the pigment from the broken skin cells had been smeared by the action of the knife into the fleshy white interior of the apple. This happened "by itself", I didn't have to try to make it happen. It was at a level of crisp detail that would be difficult to see with the naked eye without holding it very close. That was the first time I had paid attention to the exact level of detail that appears in my mental imagery, and it hadn't occurred to me before that it might be unusual. Based on what other people describe of their experience, it seems pretty clear to me that there is real variation in mental imagery, and people are not just "describing the same thing differently".
  - comprev 1y ago
    I can _remember_ the properties of an apple - approximate size, weight (my hand does not instantly drop to the floor due to its weight), etc. I can't _imagine_ an apple in my hand if you defined the colour, size or weight (for example, purple, 50cm diameter and 100Kg). In my mind I am recalling a _memory_ of holding an apple in my hand - not imagining the one according to your specifications. One example I can give is being tasked with rearranging desks in an office. I can't for the life of me _imagine_ what the desks would look like ahead of physically moving them into place. I can make an educated guess based on their length/width but certainly not "picture" how they would look arranged without physically moving them. It's like my brain BSODs when computing the image! The same applies to people - I can only recall a memory of someone - not imagine them sitting on a bench in front of me. I might remember a memory of the person on _a_ bench but certainly not the one in front of me.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - lordnacho 1y ago
- itsamario 1y ago
  Can you remember seeing? I use my imagination to get a very grainy image but it's usually my interpretation of it and what I'm using it for. Like when in school I'd imagine graphs lines before drawn or best example is a cad test and from reading the directions I could get an idea of what I was about to draw in cad Man made computers in our image, it use to be a job title.
- RajT88 1y ago
  For me, it's a little more like you describe these days. It is images, but fuzzier and more impressionistic than it used to be. I have to concentrate harder to have a full-on image of a scene, and can't so much when multitasking. In college, especially when I was studying Japanese and had to memorize a lot of shapes, I could look at a poster filled with characters and recall it hours later to translate those characters. Your mind is a muscle and it gets better with exercise, and grows weaker when lazy.
- goatlover 1y ago
  Some people can see images while they are conscious just like you see them in your dreams. Perhaps even better, depending on their ability to visualize. Maybe you just never developed the conscious ability to visualize.
- lm28469 1y ago
  When people tell me they can see things in their mind I usually ask something like: "imagine a ball, can you see it?" "yes" "ok what color is it? " I never heard anyone say anything other than a variation of "hm I don't know". It's just an anecdote but still
  - antonvs 1y ago
    What's funny is, I have complete aphantasia, but I can imagine a ball, I just can't see it. If you ask me what color it is, I would say white, because I imagined a baseball. But I can't see it, I'm just thinking about it.
    - kraftman 1y ago
      When you read this do you hear it in your head?
      - antonvs 1y ago
        I wouldn't say "hear", but I do have an inner monologue. When I read, I have an experience of the words in my mind. But similarly, when I look at the world, I have an experience of what I'm looking at, while I'm looking. The difference comes when I close my eyes vs. block my ears. When I close my eyes, I don't see images, I can't voluntarily make images appear. But with my eyes and ears blocked, I can still think words - my inner monologue - which I experience in much the same way as I do when I'm reading. I can't conjure other sounds though, which is why I don't really consider that equivalent to "hearing" - it's not sound, it's the concept of words. I don't have any analogue of that for images. Ordinary aphantasia doesn't imply anything about lack of inner monologue. Some people apparently do lack an inner monologue, and if they're also aphantasic, that's been described by some authors as "deep aphantasia". But there's no evidence that the two conditions are related, except in a kind of conceptual sense.
  - YurgenJurgensen 1y ago
    “Yes — I can imagine it. A simple sphere, maybe sitting in a soft pool of light.” “I’m picturing it as a bright red ball, glossy and catching a bit of light on one side.” Great, huh? Except that’s what ChatGPT said when I asked it those two questions. It certainly isn’t picturing anything. If a robot which only ‘thinks’ in terms of chain-of-thought of abstract tokens can act as if it truly sees things, what makes you think this test has any validity at all?
- antonvs 1y ago
  > Personally, I can see images when I dream, but I don’t see anything at all if I’m conscious and closing my eyes. That's classic complete aphantasia. I have it too. The "kind of different. I’m not really seeing it" would apply just as well to dream images. If you're interrogating people, you might try asking them whether it's similar to that.
- SamPatt 1y ago
  I can visualize things in a lucid dream, and it's identical to seeing for me. But I can only control it for a short time before I wake up. When awake, I have a "mind's eye," but it's more like what you're describing. As I fall asleep, I can actually begin to see things. I wonder if some people can do that when awake.
hvs 1y ago
If you have something to describe "in your mind's eye" then you don't have aphantasia. We can't "see" anything in our mind.
brooke2k 1y ago
It might be easier to think in terms of what you can actually achieve with your visualization. I am terrible at visual art because I struggle to picture what I am drawing before I draw it. When I do calculus problems, I have to write down in full every intermediate step because I can't visualize how the equations change more than one or two steps in the future. Those kinds of things seem to me like more objective measures of someone's ability to visualize, although I have nothing other than anecdotal evidence to back that up.
rehevkor5 1y ago
There's no diagnostic test for it. So is it real?
- abetusk 1y ago
  "Quantifying Aphantasia through drawing: Those without visual imagery show deficits in object but not spatial memory" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7856239/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7856239/
rayiner 1y ago
I can basically do a Google Street View of places I’ve been before, seeing what I’d be seeing if I was there. It’s not as clear as being there and having my eyes open, and th animation is jerky, but it’s in color, and I have the same spatial sense of where things are relative to where I am mentally standing. For the most part, I can’t “think” about things except maybe mental math. I see things, and I talk to myself in my head.
- redhed 1y ago
  I have the same thing, I can "walk" through my childhood home. I see how the living room was set up, I can walk from there to my bedroom and "see" everything. Honestly if I had good art skills I feel like I could draw it out pretty well. However I would in no way describe it as looking like I'm there at the real thing or looking at photograph, not even close really. It's kinda just a hazy construct in my mind. I feel like that is where a lot of the miscommunication comes from, people who think others can close there eyes and be transported somewhere else by imagining it. That is unless I actually just have aphantasia.
Amorymeltzer 1y ago
YMMV, but for me, the image on en.Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia> made it easy for me to understand. That and having a frank conversation with someone close to me: "Wait, you just think of something and see it, like a picture or real life?" "Wait, you actually see anything?"
abetusk 1y ago
The test is this: Close your eyes and try to visualize an apple. Do this for 30 seconds or so. Try to visualize the skin, the reflection, the texture, the stem, the depth, etc. Try to hold a stable mental picture of that apple. After the 30 seconds, rate your ability to picture the apple from 1 to 5, where 1 is complete inability and 5 is as if you were looking at a picture of an apple for those 30 seconds. 1 is aphantasia. Another idea is to recall a vivid dream you had. I think most people would describe it as being part of a movie or reality. While awake, are you able to recreate scenes in vivid detail as if you were dreaming? 5 for complete parity and 1 for not at all. 1 is aphantasia.
- mnmalst 1y ago
  Are you really saying you can see an apple in the same way you see an apple with eyes opened? The exact same way? So if you close your eyes, imagine an apple and then look at an apple that someone holds in front of your eye, the apple looks exactly the same? As if you could look through your closed eye lids?
  - altruios 1y ago
    Some people can project the image of an apple into the real world. As in, they are able to imagine an apple on the table that they see with their eyes. They 'see' it, but see that it's a projection. It's a lot like when you have two very similar images (except one change), and you cross your eyes such that they overlap to highlight the change (it's ghostly, as it's only seen in one eye). Same Idea, only instead of the other eye, that projection is coming from your brain.
    - mnmalst 1y ago
      That's interesting, so how can people like that know which is real and which is not? I don't understand it.
      - altruios 1y ago
        Try the crossed eyes 'find the difference' technique. Which is crossing your eyes such that a third image (a blending of the two images: one from each eye) appears between those two images. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvdVBzuGWr4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvdVBzuGWr4 You can easily understand where the difference is because the data is different between the eyes. The difference appears 'ghostly'. In a similar way, data from the mind's eye is different from data from the physical eyes when those two 'streams of data' are blended.
Sharlin 1y ago
Yep. Problem is that there's actually a spectrum of vividity of mental imagery, but in popular discussion it's always seen as a binary on/off thing. An old post by Scott Alexander (16+ years, mind blown) discusses this, long before the term "aphantasia" became a thing [1]. There was a debate about what "imagination" actually means already in the late 1800s; some people were absolutely certain that it was just a metaphor and nobody actually "sees" things in their mind; others were vehement that mental images are just as real as those perceived with our eyes. The controversy was resolved by Francis Galton, who did some rigorous interviewing and showed that it really does vary a lot from person to person. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing-from-one-example https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi...
- pavel_lishin 1y ago
  In Russia, color-blindness is referred to as Daltonism, and I figured Francis must have been the one to be the source of that (given this topic), but apparently it was John Dalton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalton
  - jdadj 1y ago
    I haven’t heard of Galtonism. From my experience as the colorblind child of native Russian speakers, it’s Daltonism (дальтони́зм). https://en.openrussian.org/en/colour-blind https://en.openrussian.org/en/colour-blind
    - pavel_lishin 1y ago
      Good lord, I had both of their wiki pages open, and STILL somehow D and G were the same letter in my mind. I should just delete my comment, but let it stand as a monument to my goof.
      - at_last 1y ago
        shrugged
conception 1y ago
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fis-picturing-or-visualizing-something-metaphorical-or-v0-8h2jzpusxcqf1.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D1284%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Db1893be964883cd7b5c2c615dffa48e5bc306df6 https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.... Seems like a good test?
- gowld 1y ago
  It's nothing like that at all. First, when you are awake you still see whatever is literally in front of you, even if it's your eyelids. Second, when you fail to recall something in detail, it isn't a sketch or child's drawing, it's just... incomplete sensation. We don't imagine things the way a painter paints a picture bit by bit (unless you are an experienced painter!)
altruios 1y ago
"where" the mind's eye is also variable. And may be moveable. For a time, my mind's eye was 'on the floor, sideways, behind "my driver seat"'. With some effort, it is now 'in front' of me, closer than where my vision is, occupying some space between where my vision is, and where I perceive my sense of self to be. The efforts were a combination of trataka flame training, training to remain conscious through the process of falling asleep (for lucid dreaming), and drawing (seeing an image, quickly memorizing it, and drawing it from the mind's eye projection {as in, literally trying to see the image on the blank page without access to the reference image}).
parpfish 1y ago
it reminds me a bit of the debate in psychology back in the day of propositional vs. analogical representation. there was a long running debate in the literature about how mental information (like images) were represented: a bunch of discrete language-like symbols OR a more continuous image-like format. two very different philosophies about how the information was stored and processed, but the tricky thing is that they were completely indistinguishable experimentally -- any effect you observe and try to attribute to one scheme could be accommodated in the other. with respect to the afantasia debate, it could be that everybody has the exact same mental experience but one camp describes it in a propositional (non-image based) framework the other group describes it in an analogical (imge-based) framework
ElevenLathe 1y ago
Relatedly, I'm not sure I really believe people who say they think in code and can't be bothered to render their ideas in design or decision documents with actual reasoning. I can't even tell if something is a real thought I'm having /in my own head/ until I've written it down or otherwise recorded it somewhere in the consensus reality. Very often, I /think/ I've got some problem or idea all fleshed out in my mind, but the process of writing it down (in code or prose) reveals that this was all just a kind of illusion. Or maybe I really did have it all figured out but something got lost in the process of writing it down? Seems literally impossible to say. But IMO it would be weird if all of us meat machines of the same species had radically different methods of cognition, since the empirical evidence suggests that our behavior, in the broadest possible sense, is not radically different, and neither is our thinking hardware.
- ambicapter 1y ago
  I think its far more likely that they're just bad at writing or drawing. Tons of people can picture a scene in their head but are absolutely terrible at drawing it, and can only render much more boring imagery in text.
- gowld 1y ago
  Code is "written it down or otherwise recorded it somewhere in the consensus reality" "thinking in code" means "render their ideas in code", like you render your ideas in English.
  - ElevenLathe 1y ago
    I agree, writing code is writing. I added a parenthetical above that hopefully clears that up. I guess my overall point is that I can't confidently say I've even had an actual idea, until I prove it to myself by voicing it, or writing it in code or prose, or drawing a diagram, or whatever. Thinking is hard, but it feels good to have thunk, so the mind is incentivized to give itself the illusion of having done so, if it can.
Lerc 1y ago
I have aphantasia in the sense that I have no sense of there being an image, but several years ago, I posted a comment hypothesising that the interpretation of the experience as an image might be the distinguishing factor. The response to that suggestion was unexpectedly strong, People really didn't like the notion of doubt of their experience. Some said I was accusing them of lying. It was quite odd, I thought it was an uncontroversial notion that what we feel we are experiencing can differ from reality. I think, perhaps, it was received as me saying "This is the truth, you're the one who is wrong."
- joquarky 1y ago
  Many people believe everyone perceives reality the same way. They don't understand that each of us composes a novel reality from our senses.
YurgenJurgensen 1y ago
It’s actually even worse than that. Not only am I unconvinced that aphantasia is real or merely a difference in the way people describe the same experience (either because of how they use language, or because of how their mental images are connected to their speech processing), but even if it were an experimentally verified phenomenon, people still talk about it like it’s a /thing you have/ instead of a /skill you failed to develop/. I lack the ability to produce realistic images using sticks of charcoal, but I don’t consider this to be ‘acarbographism’ or something, I recognise that other people have put more effort into learning that skill than I have.
Sephr 1y ago
Throwing in my anecdote: I acquired aphantasia after a viral infection as a child. This also slightly impacted my speech. There can definitely be a fundamental difference. In my case, I can distinctly remember my experiences from before the infection, and recall a clear difference in visualization capabilities before and after.
normalaccess 1y ago
For me it's a gradient, depending on how tired I am. I can go from fairly vivid mental image to full on seeing things with my eyes closed. It's that window when falling asleep that is the most impactful visually and very close to lucid dreaming. So I would say yes, it is like you are seeing things but in your "minds eye". If you can "hear" music in your head when thinking about a song it feels about the same as "seeing" without seeing. It's imagery but from a different place.
rsynnott 1y ago
I can _kind_ of do it, but it's not something that really comes naturally to me. And only fairly simple shapes, generally. Honestly thought this was normal for most of my life. (I also don't think verbally, not really; I gather this is something that some/most people do.) Always makes me slightly paranoid; what _else_ am I just assuming is normal?!
tines 1y ago
It's quite funny, for myself, if I concentrate I can so strongly visualize something that I stop seeing through my physical eyes and kind of go "blind," only perceiving with my eyes once I decide to again or once some large visual stimulus surprises me.
- buttercraft 1y ago
  Same for me. It has led to some awkward moments in public where it looks like I'm staring at someone from across the room, but I'm just thinking/visualizing and am only vaguely aware of what my eyes are looking at.
NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
Most people are extraordinarily dim to the point that they have zero introspective capacity. For instance, if they had more than a third grade vocabulary, would they be using the word "see" to describe this talent they think they have? I seriously suspect that if you could somehow educate everyone up to some minimal level, this disparity would disappear entirely. Anyone over the age of 40 or so grew up with the meme bouncing around (globally?) that people think "in language" to the point that one of askreddit's favorite questions til a few years ago was "people who grew up speaking another language, do you still think in X" or some variant. It was a plot point of a Clint Eastwood movie with a stolen telepathic Russian fighter jet. It's not that you have aphantasia so much that everyone else imagines they have X-Men superpowers.
saaaaaam 1y ago
Describe how you see green and I’ll tell you if it’s the same as everyone else I know.
nevertoolate 1y ago
I didn’t know people see things in the real world, like an imaginary cat until I had a dream where I could imagine something purposefully. I woke up immediately, thrown out from the dream image. I told my wife proudly that I could see something in my dream I wanted to. She told me she can imagine ANYTHING ANYWHERE ANYTIME (painter) My question is: can you see the cat on the table? If not, sorry pal.
skinkestek 1y ago
The way I understood it was the apple on a table test: I was asked to close my eyes and think about an apple. if you do it now, close your eyes for about 10 - 20 seconds and think very hard about an apple on a table. spacer spacer spacer spacer then immediately after opening your eyes tell me what color the apple was. For me and many others it is an absurd question. We only thought about the thing apple on the thing table, absolutely no visual representation. For some of my siblings they saw the apple and could of course tell me the color and also the color of the table.
- YurgenJurgensen 1y ago
  The apple was red. I didn’t even try to imagine anything. Apples are just conceptually red by default. I can also tell you that it was tart, and crisp. I didn’t imagine those sensations either, they were just the first words that came to my mind when thinking about apples. The table is brown. I didn’t try to imagine anything table either, but the table in my kitchen, where there might be apples, is brown. Can you see how this exercise is flawed?
  - skinkestek 1y ago
    My guess is you are affected. You remind me of myself before I realised just how big the difference really is. People who see images don’t just imagine them or "know apples are red" - they actually see them. I think a couple of comments in this discussion described it as controlled hallucinations. Not scary, rather something useful they can summon on demand. You can deny it all you want, but there are people who once had a rich, vivid imagination, lost it, and can describe what changed. I’m a weird edge case myself - I sometimes experience it briefly, right before falling asleep or just after waking up.
teaearlgraycold 1y ago
A guy was talking to me about designing some robot legs. He was just getting started and was new to mechanical design. The more questions I asked him the more I realized he couldn’t internally visualize what he was designing. When I’m putting something together in my head it’s like a mental CAD where I can place objects down, constrain them to each other, and see how they move in relation to each other. For this guy I recommended simply diagramming on paper to work out how it should function. I have a fuzzy mental stage for these things. It’s like my mind’s second monitor. It mostly goes ignored but I can focus on it if I want to. Shapes and colors are weak but are definitely there. But still a useful tool.
ergonaught 1y ago
Okay, so, if you think people are only metaphorically referring to their "minds eye", then you probably have aphantasia. If the idea of people "counting sheep" to go to sleep confuses you, thinking that perhaps you could not go to sleep if you just lay there counting to yourself (hint: that's not what they mean), welcome to club aphantasia. I haven't even read the comments yet and I guarantee there are people here debating that there is some spectrum or degree of quality to the imagery of the minds eye, and those people don't understand that there is nothing which can possess qualities when you have aphantasia. If there are degrees, then you don't have aphantasia. It's entirely possible to imagine things, and to access data/information about things that the brain is presumably constructing, but there is no direct, sober, conscious access to mental imagery. None. Not "fuzzy", not "cloudy", not "not very strong": none. Resonates? Again, welcome aboard. No? Thanks for stopping by. :)
Jordan-117 1y ago
My understanding of it has been that aphantasiacs can only imagine in terms of verbal descriptions, not images. If that's the case, it seems like visual analogy would be a good differentiator. For example: without any internal monologue, think of the Sydney Opera House, and then name some other objects it resembles. Someone with visual imagination should be able to rattle off stuff like sailboats or seashells or folded napkins based purely on visual similarity, while a true aphantasiac should be lost without being able to look at a picture or derive an answer from a mental list of attributes. (Likewise, if you gave a non-aphantasiac a written list of visual attributes the Sydney Opera House and ask them to name similar objects without picturing anything visually, it might be much more difficult to get the same range of answers.)
- sean_pedersen 1y ago
  By this reasoning aphantasiacs should be incapable of drawing anything from their mind.
  - Jordan-117 1y ago
    They can, but the representations are much simpler, often lacking visual detail and leaning on written labels: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2019/12/05/865576.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2019/12/05/865...
- saltcured 1y ago
  Just as an aside, I am aphantasic but also do not think verbally. It isn't a single dimension with images on one end and words on the other.
bambax 1y ago
I'm in the exact same boat. I think I have aphantasia, because when I close my eyes all I see is black, and it is easier to conjure up images with eyes open, and I absolutely would never, ever, confuse what I "see" in my mind with reality. Yet I am very good at recognizing faces, have okay memory of past events (not outstanding, but acceptable) and can describe places and people with reasonable accuracy. So, I'm not sure.
agentcoops 1y ago
There is really a fundamental difference as many studies now have shown---and I can attest from personal experience. Honestly, if you have to ask the question there's a pretty high chance you are: everyone at some level believes that their own inner experience generalizes to the rest of humanity, but it's those with aphantasia who thereby believe that everyone else's description is just a manner of speaking ("they, like me, surely don't really think in pictures"). I find the typical thought experiment of "picture an apple" less illustrative than something like "picture the face of a co-worker you see every day but aren't friends with and tell me the color of their eyes." In the apple case, everyone has a "concept" of apple and an experience of "thinking about an apple"---the difference is really in what you can deduce from that thinking and how, if that make sense. Are you reasoning on the basis of an image or from more or less linguistic facts ("apples are red therefore..." etc)? The main difference that's more than an "implementation" detail of how you think, so to speak, but really a limit concerns what's called "episodic memory." People with aphantasia rather singularly cannot re-experience the emotions of past experiences. There are a lot of studies on this and I can look up the references if you're interested. When I was really trying to make sense of my own aphantasia, I found https://www.hurlburt.faculty.unlv.edu/codebook.html https://www.hurlburt.faculty.unlv.edu/codebook.html to be one of the most fascinating resources: it's essentially a catalog of all the different modalities of inner experience a large study found. Probably there are critiques of his methodology etc, but regardless it's an invaluable aid for trying to figure out how exactly you think.
- woopwoop 1y ago
  Are you saying that a non-aphantasic person can recall the eye color of everyone in their office?
  - agentcoops 1y ago
    No, certainly not. I was trying to pose a thought experiment that draws one's attention to the how of their thinking more than "think of an apple." Even if you can't figure out the person's eye color, did you bring to mind a blurred workplace image that just didn't have enough detail in the right place? For an aphantasic, especially if you don't even know this person's name, it's really a sort of experience of an empty thought in the way that thinking about an apple isn't. It's hard to write about these things...
teamonkey 1y ago
I have aphantasia. I know what something looks like, I just can’t see it. It’s not like a written or verbal list though. I also have no internal voice so that wouldn’t make sense. It’s just like the concept of what I’m thinking of is right there in all its detail. Its extremely spatial - I’m thinking in 3D even if I’m not visualising it. On the visual side, sometimes if I try hard I can make out an amorphous blob. Mostly colourless, though sometimes it has some abstract colours. Trying to recall actual detailed features is very hard, especially faces. Occasionally I get memory flashes which are more like actually seeing a photograph in my head, but they last a fraction of a second and can’t be done on demand. Sometimes I have dreams which are more visual. This is how I know that my normal way of thinking isn’t visual.
- kraftman 1y ago
  If you think about something famous, like the Eiffel tower, or big ben, you don't picture them?
  - teamonkey 1y ago
    No. I’m remembering the Eiffel Tower as a very specific moment when I saw it the last time I went to Paris, but it’s more like a description of the scene. Not really a description though, that seems… slow? The elements are all there just not in visual form.
  - ncruces 1y ago
    No, not at all. A simple test I've seen mentioned is, ask someone this: “imagine a car, a fast car, zipping through a windy road… ok? (pause) now, what color was the car you saw?” If you even need to think about it, you hadn't seen it.
    - zajio1am 1y ago
      That does not match my experience. I can imagine things, but details are limited to properties i intentionally think that the imagined object should have.
    - 1y ago
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acka 1y ago
The Aphantasia Network has several interesting studies and a self-assessment test[2] that you can take. [1] https://aphantasia.com https://aphantasia.com [2] https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq
aytigra 1y ago
For me, even if I drop into "mental space" completely and stop seeing(or being aware of) real world while thinking about something I saw/did recently, vividness of this mental image will depend on how close I am to dream state, but even so I think I can never see this image with a lot of details, I think even in my dreams I never see very detailed image. It is like seeing with peripheral vision, I know that is there and sometimes see it with quick glances, but details only appear if I focus on some part of it and disappear quickly when focus shifts.
aatd86 1y ago
Is your mental imagery 100% under your control or does it seem that your visualization doesn't fully abide by your own will?

by andy99 1y ago

thecaio 1y ago

I was thinking the same! At first, I thought I was firmly in the “can clearly visualize” camp, but the more I read and hear people describe how they form (or don't) mental images, the less sure I am.

bigyikes 1y ago

I’ve interrogated people about this but can never get a straight answer. —— “So you can really see things in your head when your eyes are closed?” Yeah! “And it’s as though you’re seeing the object in front of you?” Yeah, you don’t have that? “So it’s like you’re really seeing it? It’s the sensation of sight?“ Well… it’s kind of different. I’m not really seeing it. —— …and around we go. Personally, I can see images when I dream, but I don’t see anything at all if I’m conscious and closing my eyes. I can recite the qualities of an object, and this generates impressions of the object in my head, but it’s not really seeing. It’s vibe seeing.

mnmalst 1y ago
I am the same and I am not convinced people can really - see - things. Like, when I close my eyes, I see the inside of my eye lids, the blackness. When I then try to imagine a candle for example there is no candle appearing in the darkness, I just remember how a candle is shaped its parts and similar characteristics. I see nothing.
- the_af 1y ago
  > I just remember how a candle is shaped its parts and similar characteristics If you do not somehow "see" the shape of the candle, how do you remember its physical characteristics? Is it like a list of physical properties in abstract form? An irregular cylinder of diameter X, longer than it's diameter, etc? I can see, in front of me, a lit candle if I wish it. I cannot claim it's picture-perfect, but I can see it; and most people can, too. I can see its yellow flame flickering. I can see drops of wax along the candle. I can see the yellow light it casts.
  - bigyikes 1y ago
    Not the parent, but I relate to their experience. It depends on what you mean by “see”. It’s nothing like seeing with my eyes, and it’s nothing like dreaming. When I “see” it is abstract. There are impressions and sensations. I can recall the qualities of something - even the visual qualities - but it doesn’t feel like sight. Can you remember what something smells like? I can recall a foul smell, but I don’t recoil because it doesn’t actually feel like smelling. Still, I have an impression of the smell. Sight works the same for me.
    - mnmalst 1y ago
      yes I think you come close to describing how I imagine things. Seeing is just fundamentally the wrong word, at least in my case. When I for example imagine a road I rode on with my bike the other day and do this with my eyes open, there is nothing popping up in front of my eyes, mixed with what i actually see atm, it's more like abstractions popping up in the back of my head. Very simple drawings maybe, just the contours of how it really looks.
      - altruios 1y ago
        Perhaps it is a mental process you can train and get better at. I understand the 'back of the head', location for imagination. And now - for me - it's at the front with some specific training. Drawing (and specific techniques within) have been the cause of the biggest shifts to 'where/how' my imagination is.
    - Narushia 1y ago
      > it’s nothing like dreaming. That's interesting. When I close my eyes and imagine "seeing" things, I would actually describe it as pretty much exactly like the sensation I have when I "see" stuff in dreams. To me, this similarity is especially clear when I wake up in the middle of a dream, then close my eyes while awake — I can continue where I left off, and it "looks" exactly the same as in the dream. But I agree that it doesn't feel like "sight", as in the physical act of seeing with your eyes.
- karmakaze 1y ago
  I'm also the same, but I do believe others can vividly see creations in their mind's eye. Nikola Tesla was one who could tinker in his imagination. Of course I wish I could do the same. On the other hand, like a blind person with other heightened senses, I have strengths in thought that surpass what seeing concretely may obscure. Most of my thoughts and reasoning is more like following graphs of related bits of vaguely visual information, it's far more topologically structural than bound to 3D physicality.
  - drooby 1y ago
    I'm convinced I probably have aphantasia.. maybe even quite extreme. On a scale of 1-10 probably 1 or 2 vividness. But if I take shrooms.... I can actually see objects with my eyes closed. I can rotate them. Morph them. It's so fun! Huge bummer that I miss out on stuff like this in my daily life. What's weird is that I can still "rotate objects" and correctly predict their final state when I am sober (up to a point, of course). But I am blind to the actual visual. It's hard to explain. It's just not registering in my consciousness - but perhaps it's there behind the curtain. So, the mind is undoubtedly capable of performing this feat. However, my brain in sober state is not wired to transfer information in this way.
    - karmakaze 1y ago
      Exactly same here. Can operation on the data, without the visuals.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  Back when I was on some medication to help me sleep, it came with the side effect of having vivid dreams... and if I didn't fall asleep fast enough after taking it, I'd get hallucinations while my eyes were closed. I knew I wasn't seeing what I thought I was seeing, but I wasn't really in control of the imagery. In one case, I thought there was a suit of armor standing over me and mumbling. In another, I was laying in bed, but I was seeing the living room from a few feet outside of my bedroom. My - and what I presume is "normal" - mental imagery isn't any different than those hallucinations, with the exception of I am willing what I imagine, and therefore control what I "see" in my mind. The colors, contours, lighting, shading, and so on are all like what you would see with your eyes, though the actual level of detail is less.
- RaftPeople 1y ago
  > I am the same and I am not convinced people can really - see - things My experience of seeing images in my mind is significantly different than when I am not seeing images, and also different from just remembering the details of an object like an apple vs visualizing it. Regarding closing your eyes: I don't typically close my eyes when I create mental imagery, I'm turning it off and on right now as I type this, now there's an apple I can see in my mind, now there is nothing but the generic slightly darkish background that the apple was sitting in front of. Now the apple is there again but it's green not red, etc.
ehutch79 1y ago
Pretend you're talking about photos and cameras. You mean you can see the image? even though the camera isn't pointed at it now? Like it's really seeing it? Same idea. You're seeing it, but you know it's just a memory of the thing, not a live view. Like pulling up a video or jpg instead of a live feed.
- bigyikes 1y ago
  Let’s suppose you have perfect recall. Pull up the image on your phone and look at it. Now close your eyes and imagine the image as accurately as you can. Is it as though you didn’t close your eyes at all? Do you see it the same way as when your eyes are open?
  - k__ 1y ago
    No. When I'm fully awake, the mental images are more like someone attached a new camera with a field of view that ends at the edges of the object/scene I try to generate.
    - bigyikes 1y ago
      Okay, forget everything outside that field of view in your real vision. If you could crop your real field of view somehow to just the photo in question, then would it be as though nothing changed? (Like, I get that things outside the phone image would change, but does the image your imagining change? Does the sensation change?)
      - k__ 1y ago
        The details get better or near photorealistic when I'm about to doze off. When I wide awake, parts of the image are "gone" when I'm not focusing them. Also, the sensation of seeing in my mind does feel different. It's like there is some different place where that image is showing up. Even if I imagine the mental image to overlay with my real vision, it feels like it's "added" somewhere between my conscious mind and the outside/real world.
- 1y ago
kraftman 1y ago
It's like hearing a song in your head, you can listen to it and maybe keep time roughly but if someone asks you what instruments there are you might not be able to get all of them, or might not remember the drums or the baseline. It's all much more vague. If you asked me to remember my childhood home I can visualise 'all of it' in my head, but maybe not what the type of bricks are like, or where all of the windows were.
- tarentel 1y ago
  Not quite. I have had a lot of musical training and have a very good musical memory. I can write down songs from my head or hear a song and write it down later, depending on how complicated it is, usually with only 1-2 listens, or play it back, etc. I can visualize things in my head but it is a lot more abstract, or rather, harder to explain.
  - tavavex 1y ago
    I think the person you're replying to didn't describe it exactly. It's not really about how good your memory is, I think. It's that no matter what, "replaying" the song in your head isn't going to bring about the same reaction as actually physically hearing music. It's like a simulation, a higher-order perception, thinking of yourself hearing it rather than willing yourself to really hear it in the same way as usual.
- Trasmatta 1y ago
  This actually highlights to me what may be different about mental images for other people. Because I can much more clearly hear music in my head than I can see images in my head. So if it's much more vague for others, that must be kind of what images are like for me.
  - RaftPeople 1y ago
    For me images are clear and easy, sound is limited and more difficult.
nosianu 1y ago
For me it is like a different "space" for mental vs real images. It is not the same neurons, I would guess. The real images are (and feel) outside of myself (obviously, you may say). The mental image feels very close and kind of "inside my mental space", in a dark space. It is far from how I see with my eyes on all levels, very basic. It is more conceptual, that concept given some vague form, not "pixels" (not that the eye is like a camera sensor either, it is much more complicated, a lot of pre-processing taking place right in the retina, which developed from a piece of brain in very early embryonic development). The better I know the object the better this internal concept-image, but far from what looking at the real thing is like. I am able to visualize, that's why I could write this, but I think my ability to do so is near the bottom. It is vague without details unless I concentrate on them specifically, and it is very dark in there. On https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia I am between apple #3 and #4 in that picture. When I read novels I develop barely any internal imagery, only barebones conceptual ones. Sometimes I look at fancy visually stunning movies, Youtube videos, or graphics sites on the web specifically to "download" some better images into my brain. Mostly for fantastical landscapes and architecture. The Lord of the Rings movies, for example, completely replaced all internal mental images I may have had, even though I read the books long before those movies were made. People like me need graphically talented people around, or my mental images will be very much limited to drastically reduced versions of what I see in real life. (THANK YOU to all graphical artists).
- conradev 1y ago
  It's the same for me, in terms of it being dark and fuzzy unless concentrated on. but I really do notice this sort of ability when it comes to memory. When I am looking for something, I can often visualize a scene of where I saw it last. This is not always helpful for actually finding the object, but it can be! When trying to recall a meeting, I can recall materials I saw (bits of text on slides, images, etc). I'm fairly good at remembering faces, and if they're next to a name when I see them, I can even associate the name! The flip side, of course, is that if I don't see the name, I won't remember it.
  - markhahn 1y ago
darkmighty 1y ago
I'd describe it as like having a second monitor in your desktop. It's not inherently "over" what I already see or anywhere physical, it's like in a different space. Sometimes it can feel like it's "behind" what I am seeing indeed (i.e. kind of over), but it can vary and I suspect that's just a learned position (I just tried and I can shift the position images 'feel where they are'). I don't see with full fidelity, I suspect that's to save power or limitations of my neural circuitry. But I can definitely see red and see shapes. Yes, it's not exactly like seeing with your eyes and if you pay attention you can sense there's trickery involved (particularly with motion being very low fidelity, kind of low FPS), but it's still definitely an image. It's not that it's a blurred image exactly, more that it only generates some details I am particularly focused at. It can't generate a huge quantity of details for an entire scene in 4K, it's more like it generates a scene in 320p and some minor patches can appear at high res, and often the borders are fuzzy. I can imagine this with my eyes open or closed, but it's easier with eyes closed. It feels (and probably is?) that it's the same system used for my dreams, but in my dreams it's more like "setup" to simulate my own vision, and the fidelity is increased somewhat.
- kayodelycaon 1y ago
  I have three different ways that vision seems to work with me. 1. Actually seeing something like in a dream. 2. A mental scratch pad I can draw on and use spatial awareness to navigate. (I see the code of applications as flying over a landscape or walking through a forest.) 3. Imagination, which uses whatever data vision gets turned into. I'm not sure how common 2 is. A lot of my brain has broken parts and this scratchpad is used in place of logic. This works fine until I need to work on linear list of similar tokens and keep them in order, like math and some functional programming languages.
noir_lord 1y ago
> Personally, I can see images when I dream. If I dream I don't ever remember them - I assume I must, I think everyone (barring medical issues) has REM sleep. I envy people that, dreams sound amazing.
- kaffekaka 1y ago
  In my experience remembering dreams is a matter of practice and stress levels. When life is calmer I remember alot more.
  - noir_lord 1y ago
    Not for me, never remembered them at any point, I asked my mum once if she remembered me dreaming when I was a kid and she couldn't remember it either, no dreams/no nightmares. I have an active imagination and I read a lot of fiction and I don't think I have aphantasia, I just go to sleep, wake up and never remember a thing in between.
- Semaphor 1y ago
  I went from frequent lucid dreams as a child and teen, to no (remembered) dreams, back to vivid (but very rarely lucid) dreams. Ask while having aphantasia, I wish I could get even approximately close to dream images while awake.
- kulahan 1y ago
  Have you tried a dream journal? We forget most of our dreams because we might have them at 2 am and wake up at 7 am. If you wake yourself up in the middle of the night one or two times, you're more likely to have been in the middle of a dream, and it's still up there in your brain enough to write down. The more you do this, the easier it becomes.
  - pm215 1y ago
    Personally I strongly do not want to get better at remembering dreams. At the moment I very rarely remember anything about dreaming, and on the very rare occasion that some fragment of memory from a dream pops into my head it is super confusing until I identify "oh, that must have been from a dream". I prefer to keep my memory uncontaminated with random garbage :)
kulahan 1y ago
It might be easier to describe as an eye that is only opened manually, and can only focus on highly specific things. This is my superpower - I can see things vividly in my mind, spin them around, zoom in/out, and more. When I'm looking at it, the only thing I can see is whatever object is being imagined. However, yes - it's similar to the sensation of seeing with your own actual eyes. The reason it seems so foreign is because our real eyes can see more than one thing at a time. Our mind's eye can only see exactly one subject at a time (though I should mention that when I navigate cities, I do so by imagining a birds-eye view, so there are many objects IN the map, but I cannot see anything other than the map, and it becomes extremely blurry outside of the section I'm focusing on).
tbabb 1y ago
Here is some context: Early in the aphantasia discourse, someone asked a group I was in to do a mental exercise: Imagine an apple. Can you tell what color it is? What variety? Can you tell the lighting? Is it against a background? Does it have a texture? Imagine cutting into it. And so on. For me, not only was the color, variety, lighting, and texture crystal clear, but I noticed that when I mentally "cut into" the apple, I could see where the pigment from the broken skin cells had been smeared by the action of the knife into the fleshy white interior of the apple. This happened "by itself", I didn't have to try to make it happen. It was at a level of crisp detail that would be difficult to see with the naked eye without holding it very close. That was the first time I had paid attention to the exact level of detail that appears in my mental imagery, and it hadn't occurred to me before that it might be unusual. Based on what other people describe of their experience, it seems pretty clear to me that there is real variation in mental imagery, and people are not just "describing the same thing differently".
- comprev 1y ago
  I can _remember_ the properties of an apple - approximate size, weight (my hand does not instantly drop to the floor due to its weight), etc. I can't _imagine_ an apple in my hand if you defined the colour, size or weight (for example, purple, 50cm diameter and 100Kg). In my mind I am recalling a _memory_ of holding an apple in my hand - not imagining the one according to your specifications. One example I can give is being tasked with rearranging desks in an office. I can't for the life of me _imagine_ what the desks would look like ahead of physically moving them into place. I can make an educated guess based on their length/width but certainly not "picture" how they would look arranged without physically moving them. It's like my brain BSODs when computing the image! The same applies to people - I can only recall a memory of someone - not imagine them sitting on a bench in front of me. I might remember a memory of the person on _a_ bench but certainly not the one in front of me.
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  - lordnacho 1y ago
itsamario 1y ago
Can you remember seeing? I use my imagination to get a very grainy image but it's usually my interpretation of it and what I'm using it for. Like when in school I'd imagine graphs lines before drawn or best example is a cad test and from reading the directions I could get an idea of what I was about to draw in cad Man made computers in our image, it use to be a job title.
RajT88 1y ago
For me, it's a little more like you describe these days. It is images, but fuzzier and more impressionistic than it used to be. I have to concentrate harder to have a full-on image of a scene, and can't so much when multitasking. In college, especially when I was studying Japanese and had to memorize a lot of shapes, I could look at a poster filled with characters and recall it hours later to translate those characters. Your mind is a muscle and it gets better with exercise, and grows weaker when lazy.
goatlover 1y ago
Some people can see images while they are conscious just like you see them in your dreams. Perhaps even better, depending on their ability to visualize. Maybe you just never developed the conscious ability to visualize.
lm28469 1y ago
When people tell me they can see things in their mind I usually ask something like: "imagine a ball, can you see it?" "yes" "ok what color is it? " I never heard anyone say anything other than a variation of "hm I don't know". It's just an anecdote but still
- antonvs 1y ago
  What's funny is, I have complete aphantasia, but I can imagine a ball, I just can't see it. If you ask me what color it is, I would say white, because I imagined a baseball. But I can't see it, I'm just thinking about it.
  - kraftman 1y ago
    When you read this do you hear it in your head?
    - antonvs 1y ago
      I wouldn't say "hear", but I do have an inner monologue. When I read, I have an experience of the words in my mind. But similarly, when I look at the world, I have an experience of what I'm looking at, while I'm looking. The difference comes when I close my eyes vs. block my ears. When I close my eyes, I don't see images, I can't voluntarily make images appear. But with my eyes and ears blocked, I can still think words - my inner monologue - which I experience in much the same way as I do when I'm reading. I can't conjure other sounds though, which is why I don't really consider that equivalent to "hearing" - it's not sound, it's the concept of words. I don't have any analogue of that for images. Ordinary aphantasia doesn't imply anything about lack of inner monologue. Some people apparently do lack an inner monologue, and if they're also aphantasic, that's been described by some authors as "deep aphantasia". But there's no evidence that the two conditions are related, except in a kind of conceptual sense.
- YurgenJurgensen 1y ago
  “Yes — I can imagine it. A simple sphere, maybe sitting in a soft pool of light.” “I’m picturing it as a bright red ball, glossy and catching a bit of light on one side.” Great, huh? Except that’s what ChatGPT said when I asked it those two questions. It certainly isn’t picturing anything. If a robot which only ‘thinks’ in terms of chain-of-thought of abstract tokens can act as if it truly sees things, what makes you think this test has any validity at all?
antonvs 1y ago
> Personally, I can see images when I dream, but I don’t see anything at all if I’m conscious and closing my eyes. That's classic complete aphantasia. I have it too. The "kind of different. I’m not really seeing it" would apply just as well to dream images. If you're interrogating people, you might try asking them whether it's similar to that.
SamPatt 1y ago
I can visualize things in a lucid dream, and it's identical to seeing for me. But I can only control it for a short time before I wake up. When awake, I have a "mind's eye," but it's more like what you're describing. As I fall asleep, I can actually begin to see things. I wonder if some people can do that when awake.

hvs 1y ago

If you have something to describe "in your mind's eye" then you don't have aphantasia. We can't "see" anything in our mind.

brooke2k 1y ago

It might be easier to think in terms of what you can actually achieve with your visualization. I am terrible at visual art because I struggle to picture what I am drawing before I draw it. When I do calculus problems, I have to write down in full every intermediate step because I can't visualize how the equations change more than one or two steps in the future. Those kinds of things seem to me like more objective measures of someone's ability to visualize, although I have nothing other than anecdotal evidence to back that up.

rehevkor5 1y ago

There's no diagnostic test for it. So is it real?

abetusk 1y ago
"Quantifying Aphantasia through drawing: Those without visual imagery show deficits in object but not spatial memory" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7856239/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7856239/

rayiner 1y ago

I can basically do a Google Street View of places I’ve been before, seeing what I’d be seeing if I was there. It’s not as clear as being there and having my eyes open, and th animation is jerky, but it’s in color, and I have the same spatial sense of where things are relative to where I am mentally standing. For the most part, I can’t “think” about things except maybe mental math. I see things, and I talk to myself in my head.

redhed 1y ago
I have the same thing, I can "walk" through my childhood home. I see how the living room was set up, I can walk from there to my bedroom and "see" everything. Honestly if I had good art skills I feel like I could draw it out pretty well. However I would in no way describe it as looking like I'm there at the real thing or looking at photograph, not even close really. It's kinda just a hazy construct in my mind. I feel like that is where a lot of the miscommunication comes from, people who think others can close there eyes and be transported somewhere else by imagining it. That is unless I actually just have aphantasia.

Amorymeltzer 1y ago

YMMV, but for me, the image on en.Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia> made it easy for me to understand. That and having a frank conversation with someone close to me: "Wait, you just think of something and see it, like a picture or real life?" "Wait, you actually see anything?"

abetusk 1y ago

The test is this: Close your eyes and try to visualize an apple. Do this for 30 seconds or so. Try to visualize the skin, the reflection, the texture, the stem, the depth, etc. Try to hold a stable mental picture of that apple. After the 30 seconds, rate your ability to picture the apple from 1 to 5, where 1 is complete inability and 5 is as if you were looking at a picture of an apple for those 30 seconds. 1 is aphantasia. Another idea is to recall a vivid dream you had. I think most people would describe it as being part of a movie or reality. While awake, are you able to recreate scenes in vivid detail as if you were dreaming? 5 for complete parity and 1 for not at all. 1 is aphantasia.

mnmalst 1y ago
Are you really saying you can see an apple in the same way you see an apple with eyes opened? The exact same way? So if you close your eyes, imagine an apple and then look at an apple that someone holds in front of your eye, the apple looks exactly the same? As if you could look through your closed eye lids?
- altruios 1y ago
  Some people can project the image of an apple into the real world. As in, they are able to imagine an apple on the table that they see with their eyes. They 'see' it, but see that it's a projection. It's a lot like when you have two very similar images (except one change), and you cross your eyes such that they overlap to highlight the change (it's ghostly, as it's only seen in one eye). Same Idea, only instead of the other eye, that projection is coming from your brain.
  - mnmalst 1y ago
    That's interesting, so how can people like that know which is real and which is not? I don't understand it.
    - altruios 1y ago
      Try the crossed eyes 'find the difference' technique. Which is crossing your eyes such that a third image (a blending of the two images: one from each eye) appears between those two images. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvdVBzuGWr4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvdVBzuGWr4 You can easily understand where the difference is because the data is different between the eyes. The difference appears 'ghostly'. In a similar way, data from the mind's eye is different from data from the physical eyes when those two 'streams of data' are blended.

Sharlin 1y ago

Yep. Problem is that there's actually a spectrum of vividity of mental imagery, but in popular discussion it's always seen as a binary on/off thing. An old post by Scott Alexander (16+ years, mind blown) discusses this, long before the term "aphantasia" became a thing [1]. There was a debate about what "imagination" actually means already in the late 1800s; some people were absolutely certain that it was just a metaphor and nobody actually "sees" things in their mind; others were vehement that mental images are just as real as those perceived with our eyes. The controversy was resolved by Francis Galton, who did some rigorous interviewing and showed that it really does vary a lot from person to person. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing-from-one-example https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi...

pavel_lishin 1y ago
In Russia, color-blindness is referred to as Daltonism, and I figured Francis must have been the one to be the source of that (given this topic), but apparently it was John Dalton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalton
- jdadj 1y ago
  I haven’t heard of Galtonism. From my experience as the colorblind child of native Russian speakers, it’s Daltonism (дальтони́зм). https://en.openrussian.org/en/colour-blind https://en.openrussian.org/en/colour-blind
  - pavel_lishin 1y ago
    Good lord, I had both of their wiki pages open, and STILL somehow D and G were the same letter in my mind. I should just delete my comment, but let it stand as a monument to my goof.
    - at_last 1y ago
      shrugged

conception 1y ago

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fis-picturing-or-visualizing-something-metaphorical-or-v0-8h2jzpusxcqf1.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D1284%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Db1893be964883cd7b5c2c615dffa48e5bc306df6 https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.... Seems like a good test?

gowld 1y ago
It's nothing like that at all. First, when you are awake you still see whatever is literally in front of you, even if it's your eyelids. Second, when you fail to recall something in detail, it isn't a sketch or child's drawing, it's just... incomplete sensation. We don't imagine things the way a painter paints a picture bit by bit (unless you are an experienced painter!)

altruios 1y ago

"where" the mind's eye is also variable. And may be moveable. For a time, my mind's eye was 'on the floor, sideways, behind "my driver seat"'. With some effort, it is now 'in front' of me, closer than where my vision is, occupying some space between where my vision is, and where I perceive my sense of self to be. The efforts were a combination of trataka flame training, training to remain conscious through the process of falling asleep (for lucid dreaming), and drawing (seeing an image, quickly memorizing it, and drawing it from the mind's eye projection {as in, literally trying to see the image on the blank page without access to the reference image}).

parpfish 1y ago

it reminds me a bit of the debate in psychology back in the day of propositional vs. analogical representation. there was a long running debate in the literature about how mental information (like images) were represented: a bunch of discrete language-like symbols OR a more continuous image-like format. two very different philosophies about how the information was stored and processed, but the tricky thing is that they were completely indistinguishable experimentally -- any effect you observe and try to attribute to one scheme could be accommodated in the other. with respect to the afantasia debate, it could be that everybody has the exact same mental experience but one camp describes it in a propositional (non-image based) framework the other group describes it in an analogical (imge-based) framework

ElevenLathe 1y ago

Relatedly, I'm not sure I really believe people who say they think in code and can't be bothered to render their ideas in design or decision documents with actual reasoning. I can't even tell if something is a real thought I'm having /in my own head/ until I've written it down or otherwise recorded it somewhere in the consensus reality. Very often, I /think/ I've got some problem or idea all fleshed out in my mind, but the process of writing it down (in code or prose) reveals that this was all just a kind of illusion. Or maybe I really did have it all figured out but something got lost in the process of writing it down? Seems literally impossible to say. But IMO it would be weird if all of us meat machines of the same species had radically different methods of cognition, since the empirical evidence suggests that our behavior, in the broadest possible sense, is not radically different, and neither is our thinking hardware.

ambicapter 1y ago
I think its far more likely that they're just bad at writing or drawing. Tons of people can picture a scene in their head but are absolutely terrible at drawing it, and can only render much more boring imagery in text.
gowld 1y ago
Code is "written it down or otherwise recorded it somewhere in the consensus reality" "thinking in code" means "render their ideas in code", like you render your ideas in English.
- ElevenLathe 1y ago
  I agree, writing code is writing. I added a parenthetical above that hopefully clears that up. I guess my overall point is that I can't confidently say I've even had an actual idea, until I prove it to myself by voicing it, or writing it in code or prose, or drawing a diagram, or whatever. Thinking is hard, but it feels good to have thunk, so the mind is incentivized to give itself the illusion of having done so, if it can.

Lerc 1y ago

I have aphantasia in the sense that I have no sense of there being an image, but several years ago, I posted a comment hypothesising that the interpretation of the experience as an image might be the distinguishing factor. The response to that suggestion was unexpectedly strong, People really didn't like the notion of doubt of their experience. Some said I was accusing them of lying. It was quite odd, I thought it was an uncontroversial notion that what we feel we are experiencing can differ from reality. I think, perhaps, it was received as me saying "This is the truth, you're the one who is wrong."

joquarky 1y ago
Many people believe everyone perceives reality the same way. They don't understand that each of us composes a novel reality from our senses.

YurgenJurgensen 1y ago

It’s actually even worse than that. Not only am I unconvinced that aphantasia is real or merely a difference in the way people describe the same experience (either because of how they use language, or because of how their mental images are connected to their speech processing), but even if it were an experimentally verified phenomenon, people still talk about it like it’s a /thing you have/ instead of a /skill you failed to develop/. I lack the ability to produce realistic images using sticks of charcoal, but I don’t consider this to be ‘acarbographism’ or something, I recognise that other people have put more effort into learning that skill than I have.

Sephr 1y ago

Throwing in my anecdote: I acquired aphantasia after a viral infection as a child. This also slightly impacted my speech. There can definitely be a fundamental difference. In my case, I can distinctly remember my experiences from before the infection, and recall a clear difference in visualization capabilities before and after.

normalaccess 1y ago

For me it's a gradient, depending on how tired I am. I can go from fairly vivid mental image to full on seeing things with my eyes closed. It's that window when falling asleep that is the most impactful visually and very close to lucid dreaming. So I would say yes, it is like you are seeing things but in your "minds eye". If you can "hear" music in your head when thinking about a song it feels about the same as "seeing" without seeing. It's imagery but from a different place.

rsynnott 1y ago

I can _kind_ of do it, but it's not something that really comes naturally to me. And only fairly simple shapes, generally. Honestly thought this was normal for most of my life. (I also don't think verbally, not really; I gather this is something that some/most people do.) Always makes me slightly paranoid; what _else_ am I just assuming is normal?!

tines 1y ago

It's quite funny, for myself, if I concentrate I can so strongly visualize something that I stop seeing through my physical eyes and kind of go "blind," only perceiving with my eyes once I decide to again or once some large visual stimulus surprises me.

buttercraft 1y ago
Same for me. It has led to some awkward moments in public where it looks like I'm staring at someone from across the room, but I'm just thinking/visualizing and am only vaguely aware of what my eyes are looking at.

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago

Most people are extraordinarily dim to the point that they have zero introspective capacity. For instance, if they had more than a third grade vocabulary, would they be using the word "see" to describe this talent they think they have? I seriously suspect that if you could somehow educate everyone up to some minimal level, this disparity would disappear entirely. Anyone over the age of 40 or so grew up with the meme bouncing around (globally?) that people think "in language" to the point that one of askreddit's favorite questions til a few years ago was "people who grew up speaking another language, do you still think in X" or some variant. It was a plot point of a Clint Eastwood movie with a stolen telepathic Russian fighter jet. It's not that you have aphantasia so much that everyone else imagines they have X-Men superpowers.

saaaaaam 1y ago

Describe how you see green and I’ll tell you if it’s the same as everyone else I know.

nevertoolate 1y ago

I didn’t know people see things in the real world, like an imaginary cat until I had a dream where I could imagine something purposefully. I woke up immediately, thrown out from the dream image. I told my wife proudly that I could see something in my dream I wanted to. She told me she can imagine ANYTHING ANYWHERE ANYTIME (painter) My question is: can you see the cat on the table? If not, sorry pal.

skinkestek 1y ago

The way I understood it was the apple on a table test: I was asked to close my eyes and think about an apple. if you do it now, close your eyes for about 10 - 20 seconds and think very hard about an apple on a table. spacer spacer spacer spacer then immediately after opening your eyes tell me what color the apple was. For me and many others it is an absurd question. We only thought about the thing apple on the thing table, absolutely no visual representation. For some of my siblings they saw the apple and could of course tell me the color and also the color of the table.

YurgenJurgensen 1y ago
The apple was red. I didn’t even try to imagine anything. Apples are just conceptually red by default. I can also tell you that it was tart, and crisp. I didn’t imagine those sensations either, they were just the first words that came to my mind when thinking about apples. The table is brown. I didn’t try to imagine anything table either, but the table in my kitchen, where there might be apples, is brown. Can you see how this exercise is flawed?
- skinkestek 1y ago
  My guess is you are affected. You remind me of myself before I realised just how big the difference really is. People who see images don’t just imagine them or "know apples are red" - they actually see them. I think a couple of comments in this discussion described it as controlled hallucinations. Not scary, rather something useful they can summon on demand. You can deny it all you want, but there are people who once had a rich, vivid imagination, lost it, and can describe what changed. I’m a weird edge case myself - I sometimes experience it briefly, right before falling asleep or just after waking up.

teaearlgraycold 1y ago

A guy was talking to me about designing some robot legs. He was just getting started and was new to mechanical design. The more questions I asked him the more I realized he couldn’t internally visualize what he was designing. When I’m putting something together in my head it’s like a mental CAD where I can place objects down, constrain them to each other, and see how they move in relation to each other. For this guy I recommended simply diagramming on paper to work out how it should function. I have a fuzzy mental stage for these things. It’s like my mind’s second monitor. It mostly goes ignored but I can focus on it if I want to. Shapes and colors are weak but are definitely there. But still a useful tool.

ergonaught 1y ago

Okay, so, if you think people are only metaphorically referring to their "minds eye", then you probably have aphantasia. If the idea of people "counting sheep" to go to sleep confuses you, thinking that perhaps you could not go to sleep if you just lay there counting to yourself (hint: that's not what they mean), welcome to club aphantasia. I haven't even read the comments yet and I guarantee there are people here debating that there is some spectrum or degree of quality to the imagery of the minds eye, and those people don't understand that there is nothing which can possess qualities when you have aphantasia. If there are degrees, then you don't have aphantasia. It's entirely possible to imagine things, and to access data/information about things that the brain is presumably constructing, but there is no direct, sober, conscious access to mental imagery. None. Not "fuzzy", not "cloudy", not "not very strong": none. Resonates? Again, welcome aboard. No? Thanks for stopping by. :)

Jordan-117 1y ago

My understanding of it has been that aphantasiacs can only imagine in terms of verbal descriptions, not images. If that's the case, it seems like visual analogy would be a good differentiator. For example: without any internal monologue, think of the Sydney Opera House, and then name some other objects it resembles. Someone with visual imagination should be able to rattle off stuff like sailboats or seashells or folded napkins based purely on visual similarity, while a true aphantasiac should be lost without being able to look at a picture or derive an answer from a mental list of attributes. (Likewise, if you gave a non-aphantasiac a written list of visual attributes the Sydney Opera House and ask them to name similar objects without picturing anything visually, it might be much more difficult to get the same range of answers.)

sean_pedersen 1y ago
By this reasoning aphantasiacs should be incapable of drawing anything from their mind.
- Jordan-117 1y ago
  They can, but the representations are much simpler, often lacking visual detail and leaning on written labels: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2019/12/05/865576.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2019/12/05/865...
saltcured 1y ago
Just as an aside, I am aphantasic but also do not think verbally. It isn't a single dimension with images on one end and words on the other.

bambax 1y ago

I'm in the exact same boat. I think I have aphantasia, because when I close my eyes all I see is black, and it is easier to conjure up images with eyes open, and I absolutely would never, ever, confuse what I "see" in my mind with reality. Yet I am very good at recognizing faces, have okay memory of past events (not outstanding, but acceptable) and can describe places and people with reasonable accuracy. So, I'm not sure.

agentcoops 1y ago

There is really a fundamental difference as many studies now have shown---and I can attest from personal experience. Honestly, if you have to ask the question there's a pretty high chance you are: everyone at some level believes that their own inner experience generalizes to the rest of humanity, but it's those with aphantasia who thereby believe that everyone else's description is just a manner of speaking ("they, like me, surely don't really think in pictures"). I find the typical thought experiment of "picture an apple" less illustrative than something like "picture the face of a co-worker you see every day but aren't friends with and tell me the color of their eyes." In the apple case, everyone has a "concept" of apple and an experience of "thinking about an apple"---the difference is really in what you can deduce from that thinking and how, if that make sense. Are you reasoning on the basis of an image or from more or less linguistic facts ("apples are red therefore..." etc)? The main difference that's more than an "implementation" detail of how you think, so to speak, but really a limit concerns what's called "episodic memory." People with aphantasia rather singularly cannot re-experience the emotions of past experiences. There are a lot of studies on this and I can look up the references if you're interested. When I was really trying to make sense of my own aphantasia, I found https://www.hurlburt.faculty.unlv.edu/codebook.html https://www.hurlburt.faculty.unlv.edu/codebook.html to be one of the most fascinating resources: it's essentially a catalog of all the different modalities of inner experience a large study found. Probably there are critiques of his methodology etc, but regardless it's an invaluable aid for trying to figure out how exactly you think.

woopwoop 1y ago
Are you saying that a non-aphantasic person can recall the eye color of everyone in their office?
- agentcoops 1y ago
  No, certainly not. I was trying to pose a thought experiment that draws one's attention to the how of their thinking more than "think of an apple." Even if you can't figure out the person's eye color, did you bring to mind a blurred workplace image that just didn't have enough detail in the right place? For an aphantasic, especially if you don't even know this person's name, it's really a sort of experience of an empty thought in the way that thinking about an apple isn't. It's hard to write about these things...

teamonkey 1y ago

I have aphantasia. I know what something looks like, I just can’t see it. It’s not like a written or verbal list though. I also have no internal voice so that wouldn’t make sense. It’s just like the concept of what I’m thinking of is right there in all its detail. Its extremely spatial - I’m thinking in 3D even if I’m not visualising it. On the visual side, sometimes if I try hard I can make out an amorphous blob. Mostly colourless, though sometimes it has some abstract colours. Trying to recall actual detailed features is very hard, especially faces. Occasionally I get memory flashes which are more like actually seeing a photograph in my head, but they last a fraction of a second and can’t be done on demand. Sometimes I have dreams which are more visual. This is how I know that my normal way of thinking isn’t visual.

kraftman 1y ago
If you think about something famous, like the Eiffel tower, or big ben, you don't picture them?
- teamonkey 1y ago
  No. I’m remembering the Eiffel Tower as a very specific moment when I saw it the last time I went to Paris, but it’s more like a description of the scene. Not really a description though, that seems… slow? The elements are all there just not in visual form.
- ncruces 1y ago
  No, not at all. A simple test I've seen mentioned is, ask someone this: “imagine a car, a fast car, zipping through a windy road… ok? (pause) now, what color was the car you saw?” If you even need to think about it, you hadn't seen it.
  - zajio1am 1y ago
    That does not match my experience. I can imagine things, but details are limited to properties i intentionally think that the imagined object should have.
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acka 1y ago

The Aphantasia Network has several interesting studies and a self-assessment test[2] that you can take. [1] https://aphantasia.com https://aphantasia.com [2] https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq

aytigra 1y ago

For me, even if I drop into "mental space" completely and stop seeing(or being aware of) real world while thinking about something I saw/did recently, vividness of this mental image will depend on how close I am to dream state, but even so I think I can never see this image with a lot of details, I think even in my dreams I never see very detailed image. It is like seeing with peripheral vision, I know that is there and sometimes see it with quick glances, but details only appear if I focus on some part of it and disappear quickly when focus shifts.

aatd86 1y ago

Is your mental imagery 100% under your control or does it seem that your visualization doesn't fully abide by your own will?